AnthoBLOGy

Computing, Libraries, Tennis, India & other interests of Vikas Kamat

About Vikas Kamat

Page Last Updated: February 20, 2013 

Introduction

People have branded blogs as a form of "digital exhibitionism" -- exposing trivial facts about common folk. I am doing my part below.

If you do not know me, first see My Home Page and then my blog AnthoBLOGy and my resume. You can contact me at

20 things About Vikas Kamat

1. I am very attracted to truth and beauty.
2. I have a Masters Degree, yet  am the least educated in my immediate family. My dad, mom, wife all have Ph.D.s
3. Some of the people I admire most are FDR, Gandhi, Shivaram Karanth, Madame Curie, and Nelson Mandela.  I have met a number of great men and women in my life who have indirectly influenced me; they include my teachers, social workers, Kannada writers and poets, and musicians. I have also been greatly inspired by the innocence of many common people I came across while growing up in India.
4. While I admire some of the  swamijis from India, I stay away from them.
5. I am not a member of any Indian Association. I am repulsed by their in-fighting, and stay as far away from them as possible.
6.  Indian Classical music is my favorite genre of music. I also like Marathi Natya Sangeet, Devotional music (Bhakti Sangeet), and medieval compositions. Bhimsen Joshi, Purandaradasa, Lata Mangeshkar, and Santana  are my favorite music makers. Once a friend from Columbia presented me with a popular Columbian pop CD, which I liked very much. 
7. I enjoy poetic works  of Rabindranth Tagore, Kuvempu, Da. Ra. Bendre, and William Wordsworth.
8. I like to read non-fiction literature much more than I like to read fiction. I have read very less fiction in my life. (See a review of some my favorite books on India.)
9. Some of my favorite movies are (or have been): The Godfather series, Pather Panchali series, Dr. Zhivago, Jurassic Park, Gandhi. I worship the genius of Satyajit Ray and Steven Spielberg. If there is one thing I want to do in my life, it is to make movies.
10. I have been interviewed on Tech TV, on That's Kannada.com and on Rediff.com. Many people have a hard time distinguishing my contributions from my famous parents, and honor/recognize me instead. As a preference, I enjoy being a private person, and shun publicity. A lot of people ask me about interracial marriages and interfaith marriages (mine is both), to which I provide no answers.
11. I have been blessed with some great friends. Some of my friendships have lasted multiple decades, because of mutual affection and respect. I value my friends a lot.
12. I was exposed to political and religious conflict from a young age and have thought a lot about separatism, freedom, heroism, and terrorism. Like my views on interracial marriages, I am not comfortable discussing it with people whom I don't know well.
13. Some of the famous people I have met are: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Gianni Zail Singh (when he was the President of India), and Atal Bihari Vajpayee (before he was the Prime Minister of India). I have also met many writers and musicians from Karnataka.
14. Although I am not a warm person, people say I have a friendly face.  I even modeled once as a customer-service representative because the selectors thought my face conveyed a "very warm, friendly, and genuine" feeling.
15. Some of the hobbies I have pursued are: sea shell collecting, stamp collecting, photography, water colors, oil painting,  sketching, collages, stitching, Tennis, and home improvement. I not not good at any of them.
16. I have served many many years as an apprentice in my father's Scientific Photo Lab and in my family's Cloth Shop. I didn't enjoy the labor then, but I feel my life is tremendously enriched by the experience of those years.
17. I like to cook, but only for parties or a group of people. I don't like to cook  regularly, and I intensely hate eating alone.
18. I have been mistaken as a Mexican, Puerto-Rican, Spaniard, Greek, and Pakistani.
19. I don't like to receive or give gifts. I would rather help (or seek help) with errands at times of need. I also believe in self-made gifts after I read that the most valuable gift Queen Elizabeth received at her wedding was a piece of handspun cloth from Gandhi. Once I hand-stitched rugged shopping bags for my father and joked that they cost me about a thousand dollars (in terms of how much time it took to make them). One Christmas I stitched a soft-bed for my dog TinTin and cracked the same joke.
20. I am the type of person who believes in ways of nature. After I saw gay dogs, I started accepting homosexuality. I was against men hunting for fun till I saw TinTin hunt down a squirrel, only to show it off to me -- she had no intention of eating the rodent. I am still looking for animals that have sex for fun instead of for reproduction. ( Many biologists have since pointed me to species that have sex for recreation)

Links

• Link to my Orkut Profile
• Link to my MySpace profile
• Link to my LinkedIn Profile
• Link to Wikipedia Page on me (I assure you that I didn't write it)